Importance of quality to customers

Quality defines in many ways. some think of quality as supremacy or excellence of a product or services, others view it is a lack of manufacturing or service defects, still others think of quality as related to product features or price. Quality produced several dozen responses, including:

Perfection

Consistency

Eliminating waste

Speed of delivery

Compliance with polices and products.

Doing it right the first time

Delighting or pleasing customers

Total customers service and satisfaction

Total most managers agree that the main reason to pursue the quality is to satisfy the customers. The American National Standard Institutes (ANSI) and the American Society for Quality (ASQ) define the Quality as the totality of the features and type of a product that bears on its ability to satisfy the stated or implied needs. The view of quality as the satisfaction of customers need is often called the fitness for use. In highly competitive markets, merely satisfying the customer needs will not achieve the success. Quality is the most patent weapon to face the fierce competition and it needs to be nurtured through the right attitude and a quality culture. Today market has become competitive and customer driven. Now customer defines quality in the twenty first century quality would be an essential requirement for survival.(Arora KC, 1998). To beat the competition, organizations often must exceed customer satisfactions. Thus one of the most popular definitions of quality is meeting or exceeding customer expectation.(Evans,2008). However, these definitions are almost endless. The argument is that people’s perceptions of quality and what exactly it is will depend upon their preferences and intern rate tins (Ba su, 2004).

Different books, Quality Gurus, Institute define quality in the different ways. In this section quality is define in their perspective to understand more on the quality.

Books, Quality Gurus,

Quality Institutes

Definition of Quality

Oxford dictionary

Quality is the degree of goodness

Joseph M Juron

Quality is fitness bourse

Eugene Lodewick Grant & Richard S Leavenworth

Quality is convenient to think of all matters related to quality of manufactured product in terms of these functions of specification, production and inspection.

Philip B Crosby

Quality is conformance to requirement, it is respect to Humanity.

Armand Feigenbaum

Quality is the total product and service characteristics of selling, engineering, developed and maintenance.

ISO9000

Planned & systematic actions necessary to provide adequate confidence that a product or service will satisfy given requirements for quality.

Any business organization main purpose is to create a customer because it is basically the consumer who essentially determines what a business is. Although it’s key to provide time and effort on how they are going to improve their products and services, it is still the customers who establish the future success of a business. Therefore, consumer service development is very important if they would want their business to prosper. Quality is a key factor in achieving business success. It can either make or break a business. This is for the reason that the entire business plan, marketing strategies, sales and profits will only depend on its impact on the customers. Basically they are in business to generate revenue through selling their products to people who are in need of these services. These people want to detect if their products will be able to make their lives much easier.

Strategies in marketing and sales will greatly help in attracting new customers for their business but it is amazing quality that keeps people coming back for more times. This is really a fact because people naturally would want to do business with people that they trust and had a good experience with. Consequently, as an entrepreneur they have to ensure that their customers will continue to buy from them through offering great quality.

It has been proven that most customers do not come back to certain business establishment because of the indifferent attitudes towards them by business owners, managers and employees regardless if they like the products or services these businesses offer. Most of the time, these dissatisfied customers will just simply walk away and never come back thus decreasing potential revenue without knowledge. It is therefore true to say that many businesses cannot succeed for a long time without giving importance to customer quality service. From the above discussion it’s prove that quality is important to customers of any organisation.

The most successful organizations are those that give customers what they want. Satisfied customers are reliable to those suppliers they feel best understand their requirements. As a result they will make repeat purchases and will recommend a business to their friends. Quality and service is related to each other the observation of having received quality in customer service is most important in the decision-making process. Customer want to have a memorable shopping experience and the most important aspect of a customer’s shopping experience is perception of service. The single most important aspect of a customer’s decision on where to shop is going to be sensitivity concerning the quality of customer service he/she receives similar with the level of respect and courtesy required earning and retaining him/her loyalty as a contentious customer. If an organization fails to provide quality customer service, the possibility of that customer’s continuing as a supporter of the organization is highly unsure A customer shops at the locations where he or she feels comfortable and where the service provided is of the highest quality.

Creating value for the customer through quality customer service is only one aspect quality customer service within an organization. According to Reichheld and Teal, “Creating value for customers builds loyalty, and loyalty in turn builds growth, profit, and more value” (1996, P. 3). By building value and creating customer loyalty, the customer will see that the organization values his investment as a consumer and those consumers who experience a continually high degree of quality customer service will see the firm as more attractive than other alternatives in the marketplace. (Andreassen and Olsen, 2008, P. 322). Organization that value customer service and creates value in its services understands that “the only way a business can retain customer and employee loyalty is by delivering superior value, high loyalty is a certain sign of solid value creation”(Reichheld&Teal,1996,P.5).

In this era of globalization where ‘Customer is the king’, customer expectations are going up which is making the situation more and more competitive. As the product is becoming generic in nature any organization can no longer rely on the traditional marketing strategies to retain the customers. From the above discussion its prove that quality is importance to customers.